On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 07:27:31PM -0500, Gwern Branwen wrote:
Here's something I've been thinking. What if we came up with an xmonad.hs that included all the stuff everybody asks for and the obvious newbie aids like a first-run xmesage prompt? (Let's call this a standardConfig, as opposed to barebonesConfig or pimpedOutConfig.)
Then we could take the current xmonad package, rename it 'xmonad-core'*; the new 'xmonad' would be basically a cabal file depending on xmonad-core and xmonad-contrib, and an executable reading 'Main.hs...importXMonad...import XMonadContrib.StandardConfig...main = xmonad standardConfig'. (xmonad-core's executable would be left alone of course.)
If we get ambitious, the new xmonad main could do more. Perhaps we could check for XineRama in main and then modify our standardConfig to use SmartBorders or not?
This, I think, could make everyone happy:
For what it's worth, I think this is a great idea and would solve the biggest problems most beginners face(e.g. contrib not installed, standard configuration extremely minimal even when compared to other tiling WMs, which e.g. automatically have a statusbar) without "polluting" core. The effort seems to be rather minimal in comparison to the advantages.